1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a guide eye for a wire rope or the like, and more particularly to a segmented guide eye, having a stacked arrangement of rings each having a hard metal inner ring portion and a concentric elastomeric outer ring portion. The guide eye of this invention was developed as an improvement on the guide eye arrangement disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 2,998,094, granted Aug. 29, 1961, to Sidney L. Fisher. Such patent is owned by the assignee of this application.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Guide eyes for wire rope are well known and generally comprise an eye through which the wire rope passes. One common form has a flaired passageway through which a wire rope passes that provides a hard preformed curved surface in contact with the wire rope. Because the fleet angle of the wire rope may vary, the hard preformed curved surface cannot provide an optimum amount of contact area for the wire rope at all times, resulting in rapid wear of both the wire rope and guide eye as the wire rope moves back and forth through the guide eye. Examples of this type of guide eye in the patent literature are U.S. Pat. No. 2,367,836, granted Jan. 23, 1945 to R. W. Brown; U.S. Pat. No. 3,215,405, granted Nov. 2, 1965 to R. E. Walsh; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,506,999 granted Apr. 21, 1970 to C. W. Neher. Another common form of single eye guide eye has the wire rope passing through a central passageway which is composed of a resilient material such as rubber and is bendable in response to a sidewise load applied to it by the wire rope. This form of guide eye has the disadvantage that the resilient material rapidly wears away and must be replaced or damage to the wire rope and guide eye will result as the wire rope moves back and forth through the guide eye. Examples in the patent literature are U.S. Pat. No. 2,529,486, granted Nov. 14, 1950 to W. S. Clarkson et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 2,631,819, granted Mar. 17, 1953 to R. C. Duncan; and U.S. Pat. No. 2,695,770, granted Nov. 30, 1954 to A. L. Stone.
Another type of guide eye has the wire rope riding in the peripheral groove of one or more pulleys. Frequently there is slippage between the wire rope and the pulleys which results in wear to the wire rope and pulley. Further, such a form of guide eye will generally permit motion of the wire rope only in one plane, making it of little use where the wire rope must move in many planes.